There is no depression in the world. Depression is the name of a psychiatric diagnosis here. A long time ago, a group of people was found to be in a similar mental state: depressed mood, decreased interest, reduced activity, and even negative light-hearted thoughts and behaviors. For the sake of communication, medical doctors referred to these manifestations collectively as depression. This is the typical symptomatological or phenomenological diagnosis. In the medical field, all similar diagnoses are unscientific diagnoses; the only scientific diagnosis is the etiological one. The diagnosis of depression has two effects on the person suffering from this affliction. The good side is that it adds certainty and a sense of control that “this is it” or “it’s just so”. The bad side is that a hat of illness is placed on the head from then on, hypnotically suppressing the possibility of conversion to non-depression. That is, after being diagnosed with depression, all self-presentation contrary to this diagnosis needs to be unintentionally or even somewhat intentionally suppressed, leading to a prolonged depressive state. This is what is called medically induced illness. All of this is to say: don’t take the name “depression” too seriously. Whether you are the doctor who makes the diagnosis or the patient who is diagnosed with depression, you can say to the word depression after the diagnosis is made: I know you, so you can go away. What we are dealing with is not the name depression, but the person behind it, and the life and death and love and hate of that person’s entire life. Compared to these, the word “depression” is too narrow and too shallow. More than 100 years ago, Freud, with his vast experience and keen intuition, discovered the difference between mourning (mourning) and depression (depression). The former is a normal depression, while the latter is pathological. Those who are able to grieve adequately are not depressed. Growth must come at the cost of grief. All civilized ritual behavior is designed to deal with loss by grieving. Rites of passage for children, weddings for singles, maternity leave for girls, and other such rituals are a frightening but growing step by step. If these rituals still do not allow us to break with the past, depression is the most effective compensation we can make for loss. At the annual meeting of the Hubei Mental Health Association in 2014, Professor Li Xiaoyi said that we will no longer diagnose one-way depression and mania, but only bipolar disorder. This is a milestone in diagnosis. From now on, depression is a mental phenomenon that is really understood in a longitudinal way; from now on, depressed patients no longer need to have a hypnotic stereotype of themselves; also from now on, all mental phenomena do not need to be regarded as pathological, but should be seen as two ends of a healthy state. Let’s take an example. An employee of a small company committed suicide and the whole company was in a state of grief. The president of the company asked me to do a little intervention. When I went, several people who were close to the suicide victim told me that they wanted to organize a grand memorial service for this good colleague and friend who had passed away. I sensed a certain kind of good-natured “excitement” coming from them, but I also saw with professional eyes the depression that might follow their “excitement. So I suggested that in the face of death, all the pomp and circumstance is not worthy, let’s make a simple ceremony – our moderation can let the deceased rest in peace. I later learned that the pain of loss didn’t affect anyone in that company too much. Take another example of the opposite. When the head of a state-owned company died of an illness, the union president was responsible for preparing and conducting a grand memorial service. She worked for days on this. After the memorial service, she was depressed for six months. Busyness is a double excitement (mania) both behavioral and internal, for which the price of the opposite emotion is paid. We are now well aware that depression and mania are mutually exclusive states. Another type of landscape of nature, different from human, may help us to better understand this type of contradictory unity. This landscape is the extinct volcano. Dead volcanoes are serene, and some craters are even turned into lakes whose rippling waters are visual evidence of their serenity – so serene as to be mournful. However, if we can travel through the centuries, millennia, tens of thousands or even millions of years, we can see them erupting fiercely: red magma shooting up into the clouds, smoke covering the sky, earth trembling, and life in ruins. In a dimension without time, serenity is not tranquility, but its integration with something opposite. A three-dimensional extinct volcano presents a very magnificent landscape, with a combination of rigidity and flexibility, superimposed and layered with movement and stillness. This is the reason why narcissists often have a “light depression”. They think they can do anything, and are often proven to be able to do anything by their fantasy. Once the harsh reality no longer gives face to their narcissism, depression is the best explanation they have for themselves. Many empirical studies have shown that Buddhist mindfulness has been shown to be effective in treating depression. To be mindful is to be fully aware of the self in the present moment. This is brilliant. From the perspective of mindfulness, when we live in the present moment, we do not have to pay for past mania and present depression, nor do we have to sacrifice present happiness and sorrow for future mania or depression. The joy and sorrow of the present is already the whole meaning of life – the best state to live is to have no past and no future, only this body, this mouth and this mind. The understanding of depression can perhaps be summarized in one sentence: depression is a defense or a cover for mania.